In this film publicity image released by The Weinstein Company, Collin Firth (left) and Geoffrey Rush are shown in a scene from &quotThe King's Speech.&quot The film was nominated for 12 Academy Awards on Tuesday, including best picture, best director, best supporting actress, Firth for best actor and Rush for best supporting actor. The Oscars will be presented Feb. 27 at the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood.

“The King’s Speech” gained momentum against the Facebook drama “The Social Network,” which dominated early Hollywood awards. Along with those two films, other best-picture nominees Tuesday for the Feb. 27 Oscars were the psychosexual thriller “Black Swan”; the boxing drama “The Fighter”; the sci-fi blockbuster “Inception”; the lesbian-family tale “The Kids Are All Right”; the survival story “127 Hours”; the animated smash “Toy Story 3”; the Western “True Grit”; and the Ozarks crime thriller “Winter’s Bone.”

“The Social Network” won best drama at the Golden Globes and was picked as the year’s best by key critics groups, while “The King’s Speech” pulled an upset last weekend by winning the Producers Guild of America Awards top prize, whose recipient often goes on to claim best picture at the Oscars.

Supporting-actor favorite Christian Bale was nominated for “The Fighter.” The best-actress field shapes up as a two-woman race between Annette Bening for “The Kids Are All Right,” who won the Globe for actress in a musical or comedy, and Natalie Portman for “Black Swan,” who received the Globe for dramatic actress.

The supporting-actress Oscar could prove the most competitive among acting prizes. Melissa Leo won the Globe for “The Fighter,” but she faces strong challenges from that film’s co-star Amy Adams and 14-year-old newcomer Steinfeld, who missed out on a Globe nomination for “True Grit” but made the cut for supporting actress at the Oscars.

For the second-straight year, the Oscars feature 10 best-picture contenders after organizers doubled the field from the usual five to open the awards up to a broader range of films. But even in a field of 10, the prize likely comes down to two films, “The Social Network” and “The King’s Speech.”

David Fincher is the best-directing favorite for “The Social Network” after winning that prize at the Globes.

Along with Firth and Eisenberg, best-actor contenders are Javier Bardem as a dying father in the Spanish-language drama “Biutiful,” which also is up for best foreign-language film; Bridges as boozy lawman Rooster Cogburn in “True Grit,” a role that earned John Wayne an Oscar for the 1969 adaptation of the Western novel; and James Franco in the real-life tale of a climber trapped in a crevasse after a boulder crushes his arm in “127 Hours.”

Bening was nominated for best actress as a lesbian mom whose family is thrown into turmoil after her teenage children seek out their sperm-donor father in “The Kids Are All Right.” Portman was nominated as a ballerina losing her grip on reality in “Black Swan.”

Other best-actress nominees are Nicole Kidman as a grieving mother in “Rabbit Hole”; Jennifer Lawrence as a teen trying to find her missing father amid the Ozark Mountains’ criminal underbelly in “Winter’s Bone”; and Michelle Williams as a wife in a failing marriage in “Blue Valentine.”

Joining Fincher and Hooper among best-director picks are Darren Aronofsky for “Black Swan”; Joel and Ethan Coen for “True Grit”; and David O. Russell for “The Fighter.”

Rounding out the supporting-actor field with Bale and Rush are John Hawkes as a backwoods tough guy in “Winter’s Bone”; Jeremy Renner as a holdup man in the bank-heist thriller “The Town”; Mark Ruffalo as a sperm-donor dad in “The Kids Are All Right.”

The Oscar ceremony will be televised live on ABC from Hollywood’s Kodak Theatre.

One notable omission was director Christopher Nolan for “Inception,” though he got a nomination for original screenplay. Nolan also missed out two years ago on a directing Oscar nomination for “The Dark Knight,” which was famously not nominated for best picture. That contributed to the decision to double the number of contenders so that acclaimed popular movies would have a better chance.

The directing category is back to an all-male lineup after Kathryn Bigelow became the first woman to win that prize last year for “The Hurt Locker,” which also claimed best picture.

Bale, the star of Nolan’s “Batman” franchise, is a strong favorite to win supporting actor as former boxer Dicky Eklund, who helps his half-brother to a title shot after his own career unraveled amid drugs and crime in “The Fighter.” The film’s star, Mark Wahlberg, missed out on a nomination as Eklund’s half-brother, boxer Micky Ward.

Two years ago, Bale’s “Batman” co-star, the late Heath Ledger, was on the same awards track as he won a posthumous Oscar for supporting actor for “The Dark Knight.”

“The Fighter” offers two sterling supporting-actress performances from Leo as Ward and Eklund’s doting but domineering mother and Adams as Ward’s tough, defiant girlfriend. Steinfeld, who was just 13 when she shot her debut performance in “True Grit,” also is a strong contender as a girl who hires lawman Cogburn to track down her father’s killer.

“Toy Story 3,” the top-grossing film released in 2010, also is nominated for animated feature and is expected to become the fourth-straight winner in that category from Disney’s Pixar Animation, following “Up,” “WALL-E” and “Ratatouille.” Pixar has won five of the nine animation Oscars since the category was added.

The other animation nominees are “How to Train Your Dragon” and “The Illusionist.”

While two of the three animated categories are huge commercial successes, the best-picture race is a mix of big commercial hits and smaller critical darlings, which is what academy organizers wanted when they expanded the competition to 10 films.

“True Grit” is the first $100 million Western hit since the 1990s, “The Social Network” climbed to about $95 million in revenue, and “Black Swan” is closing on $100 million. At the other end are “Winter’s Bone” with $6.3 million and “127 Hours” with $11 million, respectable returns for lower-budgeted independent films but small change next to big studio productions.

Besides Leo, Adams, Bonham Carter and Steinfeld, Jacki Weaver earned a supporting-actress nomination as a crime family matriarch in the Australian thriller “Animal Kingdom.”